Whatever. Pagination is about creating an interactive experience. It allows the reader to actually participate in reading the page, rather than being a passive stooge just drooling at text scrolling by on the screen. In a nation where obesity is a growing epidemic, we should be doing everything we can to make innately passive activities as active as possible. I mean, why stop at pagination? A lot of articles use multiple pictures across each page of the article...why not turn those pictures into mini slideshows, so that after clicking to get to the new page, you click to see each picture, too?

And that's still just same-old same old. Why not explore *real* innovation. Like, who says the "next" button has to always be in the same place? Why not make finding it an adventure, something the engages the reader critically, creates the opportunity for some good old fashioned problem solving? We need to be developing critical thinking skills. Maybe each page in the article, or each picture, could have a clue as to where on the web page the reader might find the hidden button that will allow for the next page to be accessed. Think of the sense of achievement people will have after having successfully found them all! We're always talking about building self confidence; here's a real chance to do just that.

And why not use the web to help develop motor skills, too? Who says the buttons have to be static? Why not have them moving around the page, flickering and jumping around and maybe turning invisible for a while? So the readers have to play a reflex game to hit it after they find it?

Reading a web site doesn't have to be boring, in other words. It can be fun.

Gecko Gingrich:Pud: At least they had a single page option on their 6 page article about how paginating is a bad thing.

[www.slate.com image 568x160]

You know how I know you didn't RTFA?

I was originally going to make a joke about how the second page only had 2 sentences (I'm sure it was intentional). But then I saw that picture in the middle of the article, and decided it was just too easy to pass up

Pocket Ninja:Whatever. Pagination is about creating an interactive experience. It allows the reader to actually participate in reading the page, rather than being a passive stooge just drooling at text scrolling by on the screen. In a nation where obesity is a growing epidemic, we should be doing everything we can to make innately passive activities as active as possible. I mean, why stop at pagination? A lot of articles use multiple pictures across each page of the article...why not turn those pictures into mini slideshows, so that after clicking to get to the new page, you click to see each picture, too?

And that's still just same-old same old. Why not explore *real* innovation. Like, who says the "next" button has to always be in the same place? Why not make finding it an adventure, something the engages the reader critically, creates the opportunity for some good old fashioned problem solving? We need to be developing critical thinking skills. Maybe each page in the article, or each picture, could have a clue as to where on the web page the reader might find the hidden button that will allow for the next page to be accessed. Think of the sense of achievement people will have after having successfully found them all! We're always talking about building self confidence; here's a real chance to do just that.

And why not use the web to help develop motor skills, too? Who says the buttons have to be static? Why not have them moving around the page, flickering and jumping around and maybe turning invisible for a while? So the readers have to play a reflex game to hit it after they find it?

Reading a web site doesn't have to be boring, in other words. It can be fun.

Pud:I was originally going to make a joke about how the second page only had 2 sentences (I'm sure it was intentional). But then I saw that picture in the middle of the article, and decided it was just too easy to pass up

Here's a reason NOT to put a story on several pages (or slideshows): I will NOT read your article and I will NOT see any ads. I am not alone here, so websites...say goodbye to your consumers!

Paradoxically, if these websites chase MORE customers away it would actually seem to "increase" their productivity because a greater %age of users would see the ads (possibly increasing the click-thru rate) - not taking into account you've lost users by your web design.

Kind of like the unemployment rate - it looks better (lower) the more people who give up looking for work. If ALL unemployed people quit looking for work we'd have 0% unemployment - great, huh?

I like the way Andrew Sullivan's blog does it. Read the lead paragraphs, click the Read On link, the rest of the article text fills in in-line... no new page load required. Dunno how it works but I hope it catches on.

Pocket Ninja:And why not use the web to help develop motor skills, too? Who says the buttons have to be static? Why not have them moving around the page, flickering and jumping around and maybe turning invisible for a while? So the readers have to play a reflex game to hit it after they find it?

Reading a web site doesn't have to be boring, in other words. It can be fun.

I remember banner ads that made me shoot something or whack something and I could enter to win a prize! I still haven't won anything (yet), but hey, I've lost like 2 pounds with all that extra clicking!

Temporarily Qualmless:I like the way Andrew Sullivan's blog does it. Read the lead paragraphs, click the Read On link, the rest of the article text fills in in-line... no new page load required. Dunno how it works but I hope it catches on.

That's the thing. With the advent of AJAX (like, ten years ago IIRC), this whole thing should have been moot. You think a giant block of text ruins your site's layout? Fine, use AJAX to paginate the content without refreshing the whole page. But it's such a deliberate cash-grab, and it seems ridiculous when so many UIs are moving towards more fluid designs that don't interrupt your workflow.

But then, I almost never RTFA so what do I care?

/Hobbyist web designer, using AJAX for years to create fluid interfaces//Actually did R this FA

Gecko Gingrich:Pud: I was originally going to make a joke about how the second page only had 2 sentences (I'm sure it was intentional). But then I saw that picture in the middle of the article, and decided it was just too easy to pass up

No you weren't.

Puds law, when calling "I was just joking about that error", on the internet, there is no way to prove you were just joking.

Pocket Ninja:Whatever. Pagination is about creating an interactive experience. It allows the reader to actually participate in reading the page, rather than being a passive stooge just drooling at text scrolling by on the screen. In a nation where obesity is a growing epidemic, we should be doing everything we can to make innately passive activities as active as possible. I mean, why stop at pagination? A lot of articles use multiple pictures across each page of the article...why not turn those pictures into mini slideshows, so that after clicking to get to the new page, you click to see each picture, too?

And that's still just same-old same old. Why not explore *real* innovation. Like, who says the "next" button has to always be in the same place? Why not make finding it an adventure, something the engages the reader critically, creates the opportunity for some good old fashioned problem solving? We need to be developing critical thinking skills. Maybe each page in the article, or each picture, could have a clue as to where on the web page the reader might find the hidden button that will allow for the next page to be accessed. Think of the sense of achievement people will have after having successfully found them all! We're always talking about building self confidence; here's a real chance to do just that.

And why not use the web to help develop motor skills, too? Who says the buttons have to be static? Why not have them moving around the page, flickering and jumping around and maybe turning invisible for a while? So the readers have to play a reflex game to hit it after they find it?

Reading a web site doesn't have to be boring, in other words. It can be fun.

Itchy92You think a giant block of text ruins your site's layout? Fine, use AJAX to paginate the content without refreshing the whole page.

But please include a version that works without Javascript.It's really annoying if sites use "noscript" blocks (i.e. they show that someone has thought about it), but instead of content the only thing in that block are 3rd party web bugs and maybe an ad.Great, make sure the pageview gets counted, but don't care if the user sees only a blank page.

Also, some AJAX slideshows are made so bad, they're slower than replacing the whole page; I've seen one site where a single click on "next" to swap the image and caption did trigger about 25(!) requests behind the scenes.

/ and apropos of nothing, if there's someone in need of a good cockpunch, it's otherwise clueless Javascript people who are responsible for stuff like "a href='javascript:document.location=...."

Pagination requires more effort on the part of the user, and so therefore is bad design. I've been on the Internet since 1994, and back then there were less pages on the Internet - because less things had become paginated. You didn't need a Google search engine back then: we used Alta Vista, which was robust enough.

But now, with all these new pages, we have to have something like Google, which has servers in every town and is watching us. I was traveling last week, and I verified that I could even get Google in Sierra Blanca, TX, which is a small town with nothing but a border checkpoint and a Chevron. This is ridiculous.

What they should do is change the pagination to magnification. I have patented this process, so don't bother trying to steal my dreams. But all of you who have condoned pagination up until now are about to have a rude awakening when my technology makes this obsolete. Sorry Drew. Sorry Sergey. Soon it will be "Paging Dr. Falken!"

Pocket Ninja: Who says the buttons have to be static? Why not have them moving around the page, flickering and jumping around and maybe turning invisible for a while? So the readers have to play a reflex game to hit it after they find it?

I've actually seen that done.An ad layer was put over a flash video player and when you cursor was over the layer's "close" button, the button moved down from the upper right to the lower right corner.That is, I suppose it was an ad layer; the actual ad must have been blocked, because I didn't see nothing but a "close" button.

"Pages that run too long can irritate readers," Plotz said in an email. "We run stories of 2,000, 4,000, even 6,000 words, and to run that much text down a single page can daunt and depress a reader. So pagination can make pages seem more welcoming, more chewable."

Hogwash, Mr. Plotz. You do it not only for the pageviews, but for the metrics. If the 1100-word article is on a single page, you don't have any way to determine how many of your readers (a) read the whole thing, (b) skimmed the whole thing, or (c) read the first paragraph and clicked away. But if you can make the majority of your readers click on the "2" to read the last paragraph, you know the answers to all three of those questions - what portion of your readers wanted to see the whole article, and of those readers, by comparing the time of the "page-2" pageview and correlating it with the Referrer and the cookie of the "page-1" view, you can make a guess as to how fast they read, and hazard a guess as to who's reading for content and who's just skimming. Which is frankly none of your farking business. (I wonder if, when analytics tools for sites with "printer-friendly" output come across my clicktrail, do they imagine I'm actually some doddering old executive with a hundred pages of dead-tree printed out per day?)

I loathe web "designers" who interrupt me while I'm reading-for-content by insisting on me stopping what I'm doing in order to navigate. The web is not print. The size of the scrollbar is more than sufficient to hint at the length of the article. Fark you, Mr. Plotz, and anyone who writes like you.

/man, that came out way rantier than I expected.//sounds better if you read it in the voice of one of the Warner brothers.///or the Warner sister.